"Now there is someone," murmured a big fat woman with her hands
stuffed into white cotton gloves, "who may be sure of her future!"
The official raised his head, dazzled by the radiant vision.
Forgetting the lack of courtesy he had shown those who had preceded
her, he advanced towards Madame Darbois and, raising his black velvet
cap, "Do you wish to register for the entrance examinations?" he said
to Esperance.
She indicated her mother with an impatient movement of her little
head. "Yes," said Madame Darbois, "but I come after these other
people. I will wait my turn."
The man shrugged his shoulders with an air of assurance. "Please
follow me, ladies."
They rose. A sound of discontent was audible.
"Silence," cried the official in fury. "If I hear any more noise, I
will turn you all out."
Silence descended again. Many of these women had come a long way. A
little dressmaker had left her workshop to bring her daughter. A big
chambermaid had obtained the morning's leave from the bourgeois house
where she worked. Her daughter stood beside her, a beautiful child of
sixteen with colourless hair, impudent as a magpie. A music teacher
with well-worn boots had excused herself from her pupils. Her two
daughters flanked her to right and left, Parisian blossoms, pale and
anaemic. Both wished to pass the entrance examinations, the one as an
ingenue in comedy, the other in tragedy. They were neither comic nor
tragic, but modest and charming.
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